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Taking Children: A History of American Terror
"You have to take the children away."—Donald Trump
Taking Children argues that for four hundred years the United States has taken children for political ends. Black children, Native children, Latinx children, and the children of the poor have all been seized from their kin and caregivers. As Laura Briggs’s sweeping narrative shows, the practice played out on the auction block, in the boarding schools designed to pacify the Native American population, in the foster care system used to put down the Black freedom movement, in the US’s anti-Communist coups in Central America, and in the moral panic about “crack babies.” In chilling detail we see how Central Americans were made into a population that could be stripped of their children and how every US administration beginning with Reagan has put children of immigrants and refugees in detention camps. Yet these tactics of terror have encountered opposition from every generation, and Briggs challenges us to stand and resist in this powerful corrective to American history.
Taking Children argues that for four hundred years the United States has taken children for political ends. Black children, Native children, Latinx children, and the children of the poor have all been seized from their kin and caregivers. As Laura Briggs’s sweeping narrative shows, the practice played out on the auction block, in the boarding schools designed to pacify the Native American population, in the foster care system used to put down the Black freedom movement, in the US’s anti-Communist coups in Central America, and in the moral panic about “crack babies.” In chilling detail we see how Central Americans were made into a population that could be stripped of their children and how every US administration beginning with Reagan has put children of immigrants and refugees in detention camps. Yet these tactics of terror have encountered opposition from every generation, and Briggs challenges us to stand and resist in this powerful corrective to American history.
256 pages, Hardcover
First published May 1, 2020
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1981 people want to read
About the author
Laura Briggs
8 books27 followersLaura Briggs is the Chair of the Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies department at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
December 25, 2022
This is a good book generally but one I read for a book club and wouldn’t have picked up on my own, bc it feels like something I already know a lot about. For that reason, my thoughts are kind of nit-picky, but I think this would be a good book if you didn’t know much about the subject matter. Notes I wrote as I read:
- Dorris/Erdrich stuff is super interesting and unknown to me, and generally the FAS and ICWA stuff was interesting in Light of the current icwa stuff especially
- Traces an interesting and clear line- but sometimes I feel like she’s bypassing accuracy or precision to make her point - I guess it’s a question of audience, but hate the use of refugee when it’s not correct - weird political project of trying to make everyone into a refugee instead of taking the opportunity for education around immigration terminology and making clear that all immigrants are deserving - not just people who fit into the concept of refugee
- Feel like she also lowkey underplays the role of the US in coups/anti communism in central and South America - different than Jakarta Method narrative
- Also curious about the affective choice to use “camp” - again, feels like a missed opportunity to indicate that “detention center” should evoke the same horror as “camp.”
- Has she never heard of SIJS? Again feels like a hard book to read as someone w too much insight - some brushing over distinctions for the purpose of making her point
- Funny to argue that Trump strategy is a “new kind of immigration policy rooted in racial nationalism” when the whole book has been showing how it’s not new - I agree that Trump is a while nationalist and that anti-immigrant policy is a facet of that, but it seems to not add up to make both these arguments at once - again when programs like H2A are being allowed - Harshia Walia does a better synthesis of this imo wrt terror, exploitability, and the desire to keep undocumented people in a constant state of precarity to extract labor - and I don’t actually think that’s changed under different immigration regimes. Also that the destabilization of other regions isn’t unlinked from creating an exploitable underclass for labor.
- Again on above point - I think she makes too much of children migrating “breaking a cycle of migration” when all the UACs I’ve met came bc they were forced to by poor conditions and intend to work here - maybe or maybe not stay, and probably not get status. Not sure there’s anything so radical in the asylum process, especially when millions of undocumented ppl who’ve been here for years are in such precarious labor conditions.
- I also kind of disagree w her characterization of 2018 vs 2019 - there was huge momentum both years. It’s really covid that slowed that.
- Would have been interested in exploration of queer parenthood issues- but feels more like a future than a past
- I also always think it’s complex to discuss ppl from the northern triangle - both yes they’re the majority of immigrants and they’re also not even close to the only, and sometimes feels like there’s erasure or eliding of the existence of other immigrants in these detention centers etc.
- Dorris/Erdrich stuff is super interesting and unknown to me, and generally the FAS and ICWA stuff was interesting in Light of the current icwa stuff especially
- Traces an interesting and clear line- but sometimes I feel like she’s bypassing accuracy or precision to make her point - I guess it’s a question of audience, but hate the use of refugee when it’s not correct - weird political project of trying to make everyone into a refugee instead of taking the opportunity for education around immigration terminology and making clear that all immigrants are deserving - not just people who fit into the concept of refugee
- Feel like she also lowkey underplays the role of the US in coups/anti communism in central and South America - different than Jakarta Method narrative
- Also curious about the affective choice to use “camp” - again, feels like a missed opportunity to indicate that “detention center” should evoke the same horror as “camp.”
- Has she never heard of SIJS? Again feels like a hard book to read as someone w too much insight - some brushing over distinctions for the purpose of making her point
- Funny to argue that Trump strategy is a “new kind of immigration policy rooted in racial nationalism” when the whole book has been showing how it’s not new - I agree that Trump is a while nationalist and that anti-immigrant policy is a facet of that, but it seems to not add up to make both these arguments at once - again when programs like H2A are being allowed - Harshia Walia does a better synthesis of this imo wrt terror, exploitability, and the desire to keep undocumented people in a constant state of precarity to extract labor - and I don’t actually think that’s changed under different immigration regimes. Also that the destabilization of other regions isn’t unlinked from creating an exploitable underclass for labor.
- Again on above point - I think she makes too much of children migrating “breaking a cycle of migration” when all the UACs I’ve met came bc they were forced to by poor conditions and intend to work here - maybe or maybe not stay, and probably not get status. Not sure there’s anything so radical in the asylum process, especially when millions of undocumented ppl who’ve been here for years are in such precarious labor conditions.
- I also kind of disagree w her characterization of 2018 vs 2019 - there was huge momentum both years. It’s really covid that slowed that.
- Would have been interested in exploration of queer parenthood issues- but feels more like a future than a past
- I also always think it’s complex to discuss ppl from the northern triangle - both yes they’re the majority of immigrants and they’re also not even close to the only, and sometimes feels like there’s erasure or eliding of the existence of other immigrants in these detention centers etc.
January 21, 2024
Not my usual type of read but after reading Our Missing Hearts, I wanted to know more about the real-world atrocities that the author drew inspiration from. This book is very dense & very detailed.
September 20, 2020
As I am researching for my own book, I am reading books on the subject. This book is one of the best. It's also the shortest one. It simatanously is academic and emensly quotable. It also ties together the history of movements, which is how history should be looked at, and how the movements ended child taking throughout history. There are some parts I wish was filled out more, but overall I can't recommend it enough.
It also quotes the classic song "Whitey's on the Moon."
It also quotes the classic song "Whitey's on the Moon."
January 31, 2021
This is a very thought provoking book and shines a light on the harsh history of America taking children from their parents. I knew pieces of this history, but not the extent or interconnectedness of it all. Worth reading, bit it is heartwrenching.
December 2, 2023
A very thorough and straightforward history of the practice of child taking in the U.S.
January 18, 2024
I really learned a lot. So much of what is written is a hidden history for most of us. Our involvement in the 1980s in Central America. The Iran-Contra affair/scandal and how that involvement is a root factor of our illegal drug problems and immigration problem
April 7, 2023
A very quick and informative read, “Taking Children” was a riveting telling of the history in our country in separating families — both at home and abroad. Structured as an argument against family separation at the southern border, “Taking Children” delves into our countries history of using child separation as a racist warfare tactic to keep oppressed communities “in their place”, and avoid rebellion. This psychological attack kept BIPOC communities living in fear for centuries, losing their children as retribution for fighting for their own rights, including the right to raise their own children.
Starting with slavery, it had me in tears. Reading about the women who lost their children, the children being raised by strangers, white slaveholders raping enslaved women and selling the child for a profit, it taught me so many things that they never teach you about slavery. We always knew families were separated, but it’s never explained to us that this tactic was used specifically to sustain the institution of slavery and (more importantly) to prevent a slave rebellion — a detail they leave out so we won’t recognize that the practice (and the racist motives that fueled it) continued long after the Emancipation Proclamation.
The book goes on to discuss how these very tactics are used through Native American Boarding Schools, civil wars in Latin America (financially supported by the US), repressing BIPOC uprising in America, the war on drugs, separating families at the southern border, and more. How common this tactic is, is absolutely abhorrent. I would (and could) go into detail about each, but that would make this review so long nobody would read it in its entirety.
I wholeheartedly recommend this book to absolutely anybody, left or right, that claims to hold “family values” at a high esteem in their life. That value needs to be spread beyond the white, nuclear family. The author holds both political parties in the US accountable for their actions or their implicitly in the racist evils being done. Both sides have separated families, and both sides are strongly to blame.
Children need their parents, and the situations where a child is better off with a stranger are few and far between. Instead of spending money to separate families, that money would be put to better use keeping them together.
Starting with slavery, it had me in tears. Reading about the women who lost their children, the children being raised by strangers, white slaveholders raping enslaved women and selling the child for a profit, it taught me so many things that they never teach you about slavery. We always knew families were separated, but it’s never explained to us that this tactic was used specifically to sustain the institution of slavery and (more importantly) to prevent a slave rebellion — a detail they leave out so we won’t recognize that the practice (and the racist motives that fueled it) continued long after the Emancipation Proclamation.
The book goes on to discuss how these very tactics are used through Native American Boarding Schools, civil wars in Latin America (financially supported by the US), repressing BIPOC uprising in America, the war on drugs, separating families at the southern border, and more. How common this tactic is, is absolutely abhorrent. I would (and could) go into detail about each, but that would make this review so long nobody would read it in its entirety.
I wholeheartedly recommend this book to absolutely anybody, left or right, that claims to hold “family values” at a high esteem in their life. That value needs to be spread beyond the white, nuclear family. The author holds both political parties in the US accountable for their actions or their implicitly in the racist evils being done. Both sides have separated families, and both sides are strongly to blame.
Children need their parents, and the situations where a child is better off with a stranger are few and far between. Instead of spending money to separate families, that money would be put to better use keeping them together.
February 19, 2022
Accessible and heartbreaking, this investigation of America’s role in taking children from parents is mind blowing. Brilliant research backs up straight-forward writing and provides the reader with a clear perspective on the weaponization of child-taking as an effective means to oppress marginalized people, past and present. Highly recommended. Best book on human rights that I’ve read in a long time.
November 11, 2022
"Taking children wounded people fiercely, and it was meant to hurt and terrify them into submission."
This was so informative and well written. It really outlines the horror that various minority groups have faced, particularly as consequences to their demands and pleas for social justice and equality. This book made me so angry that I had to put it down multiple times but it is so crucial to truly understand our history and how this is still affecting people in our country today.
This was so informative and well written. It really outlines the horror that various minority groups have faced, particularly as consequences to their demands and pleas for social justice and equality. This book made me so angry that I had to put it down multiple times but it is so crucial to truly understand our history and how this is still affecting people in our country today.
February 8, 2023
This is an incredibly eye-opening and difficult book that should be mandatory reading in US history classes. While I know it's not the focus of this book, I do wish some time had been dedicated to exploring the history of taking children in general. It seems that the US has perfected this system of repression through terror, but we can't have invented it. Some more context would have been useful.
September 3, 2024
Extremely frightening and distressing read; some spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors. A look over several hundred years’ worth of American history in forcibly taking children, which is overall argued as a genocidal logic of elimination directed at various marginalized groups that have found themselves in the crosshairs of US military, imperialists, or opportunistic presidents.
January 14, 2026
This book was very informative but not an enjoyable subject. Because of how much information is packed into a relatively short book I found some of it hard to understand, especially because a lot of this information was new to me and I was having trouble with the context. Regardless, I think Briggs does a good job broaching a very polarizing topic in a subjective way.
September 17, 2022
clearly argued, to devastating effect. the history of taking children in america is a long one, with trump’s policy of family separation among asylum seekers at the border only the latest iteration of a sordid tactic.
December 30, 2022
I had to read this book for a "Geographies of Law and Power" college class at Drake University. Although I was only required to read the intro, chapter 1, 5, and conclusion I read the whole book because of how interesting it was (and to prepare for finals). This book has taught me so many things that my previous education, especially on slavery and the jim crow era, left out.
October 11, 2021
This books offers a comprehensive account of the US history of child removal and how past events led to the cruelty of the Trump administration.
March 23, 2022
This book was assigned for one of my graduate classes. It was very interning to read child separations in a historical viewpoint across many different cultures.
January 16, 2023
How much I gained from this book is definitely five-star. However, the writing style was academic so it wasn't super engaging.
March 9, 2023
A horrifying study of four hundred years of terrorist US policies. Taking children from their parents as a way to break movements for human rights and make this country white.
August 7, 2023
Pretty good review of forced family separations thought US history. As maddening as you might expect.
Probably what "some people" think of as making America great again.
Probably what "some people" think of as making America great again.
June 24, 2025
i was unconvinced by some of briggs’ arguments as an academic. i was sold as an everyday consumer. would recommend to your crazy uncle who hates minorities to try and redeem him.
January 2, 2026
Reads like a bad term paper. The topic is interesting and important, but I had to slog through run-on sentences and frequent repetition to get there.
February 3, 2023
non-fiction text about the history of disappearing or detaining children in the Americas, and its relevance today. though it mostly focused on the USA, it also explored the USA’s role in Latin America, which I found particularly interesting. the text was structured well with each chapter taking on a very different aspect of history. it was frightening reading this, considering how much of the disappearances are unresolved and will remain so, as well as how the detainment of children continues to take place. i would like to research this topic more, as the text didn’t really address what the reader can do to help. i would recommend this to anyone interested in the history of the USA and its influence on the Americas.
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews